7 Techniques to Tackle Advanced Lightroom

When WPPI partnered with ShootDotEdit last year for an ongoing webinar series, my main goal was collaboration and education. Each month, we work with several industry-leading photographers to go deep on a trending topic. We want to give you relevant and detailed tips to better your business and craft. Adds WPPI director Jason Groupp, “It’s all about engaging our members on a regular basis.” 

For the next 11 months in Rangefinder, I present the best advice pulled from the series, which includes several WPPI teaching professionals and a range of topics, from SEO to workflow to Instagram essentials and much more.

Photo © Jared Platt

First up is Phoenix, Arizona, wedding photographer and Lightroom guru Jared Platt on Creating a Default Style, from his webinar with me outlining advanced image retouching that you can complete without ever bringing your images into Photoshop. (And don’t miss Platt’s WPPI Platform Class, Serious Workflow in Lightroom 5, Photoshop CC and The Creative Cloud, on March 3, 8:30-10:00 a.m. at the MGM Grand in Vegas.)

Setting up a “Default Style” for all RAW images coming into Lightroom does not take too much time (30-90 minutes) but can save you hours, even days, on every wedding edit you do. (For more information, check out Lightroom Basics Webinar and Advanced Lightroom Webinar.)

1. Create camera calibrations with X-Rite’s ColorChecker Passport and use it to calibrate your camera in Lightroom (LR) for extremely accurate color from the beginning.

2. Set your camera default settings in LR. This ensures that you will not be wasting time just trying to get your images to look like the JPG version you saw on the back of your camera.

3. You can set your default settings per camera model, individual camera serial numbers or even by ISO setting, which means LR can even adjust the noise reduction on each individual ISO so that each image is adjusted to compensate for the limitations in the camera’s higher ISO settings.

4. Create presets by targeting ONLY the sliders necessary to create a given effect and leave out the Basic exposure and white balance adjustments. A targeted preset can then be used to quickly apply style to your images either on import or later in development.

5. Presets can be applied in the develop module or even more simply with the “spray can tool” in the Grid mode of the Library module. Choose a preset “style,” like an old school, thin black-and-white negative and spray any image in the grid that looks like it could use that style. Try clicking and dragging across multiple images. It is a spray can, after all.

6. Organize and name your presets so you can find the styles you want to apply quickly from the spray can tool. A limited number of style presets in a favorites folder will make assigning styles simple and efficient.

7. Stay in Lightroom as long as you can; only go to Photoshop for the final heavy retouching. You can do a lot more in Lightroom than you might think you can. Discover its full power!

Jared Bauman is the co-founder and president of ShootDotEdit, the first choice post-processing partner for the Wedding Pro, and everything they shoot. Fast is Best­—ShootDotEdit provides turnaround time as fast as 48 hours.

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